Today, a 24 stories high wind turbine arrived in Ohio after being shipped all the way from Europe. As the Buckeye Institute has written in the past, wind turbines are not an economical source of energy for Ohio and they do nothing to create jobs in the state. Plus, given the relatively short life spans of wind turbines, taxpayers cannot recoup the cost of investment.
Get the data on wind turbines in Ohio here:
Government Powers Private Business through Green Energy Grants
Lake Erie Wind Turbines Costly and Inefficient
Here in Wyoming wind turbines are very inefficient. While we do have a lot of wind, the high altitude (6600 feet and higher) makes the air so thin it takes away a lot of the efficiency expected from wind turbines. Also, maintenance cost is high, estimated at one full-time maintenance person per turbine. The down time is roughly 60 percent which motivates some owners to run their wind turbine generators on natural gas the rest of the time.
Wind farms are being built in Ohio only because of 1) tax subsidies and 2) legal mandates that will require utilities to buy electricity from ‘alternative’ sources like wind & solar a few year hence.
And needless to say, these artifical supports for wind are all predicated on the man-made global warming hypothesis being true, which is something that appears more and more dubious with each passing day.
In fact, so dubious is this hypothesis that most of its proponents have now found it necessary to drop the term ‘global warming’ and instead use ‘climate change.’ In this way, no matter what happens, whether the temperature rises or falls, carbon dioxide (man) can be blamed.
A local Ohio utility has contracted to buy wind power at only 9 cents per KWH, which disproves the really incorrect math that the author tried to use in the Blade newspaper where she claimed that Lake Erie wind turbines would take a thousand years to pay for them selves. I would like to see her show her math on this, like in math class. Also consider that the wind is always stronger on the lake, and the is often blowing on the lake when it isn’t perceptible on land. Please consider the cost of tens of thousands of dead Americans per year when you determine the cost of coal power, cost to families too. The mercury poisoning of kids brains while they are still in their mothers womb, that has a cost too. Asthma and asthma deaths, missed work time, that has cost. Coal power receives subsidies, tax breaks, guarantees of profitability from the state , etc., etc., that if you took away the massive welfare benefit that coal power receives, 9 cent KWH wind power will prove to be the bargain of a lifetime for Ohio taxpayers. Koch and it’s foundations should use honest math when entering into calculations about energy. What value would Koch put on the 500 mountain tops that have been blown off to get at coal seams in the Appalachian mountain range? What price would they put on fish kills from once through cooling systems at coal power plants that have hammered the worlds biggest walleye fishery for decades? There is no way to present a true evaluation of wind power, when the author enters into the article with a Koch bias that is much more tea bag clamoring than fact. What did you think of General Electric Corporations claim that solar photovoltaic power will be cheaper than coal in 3 to 5 years? G.E. is also building the biggest solar pv factory in the country, and has spent a half billion dollars buying energy startups that don’t include a future for coal. G.E. is not a liberal environmental group, they are of course a large and profit oriented corporation. Their army of engineers and scientists have concluded that CdTe PV panels will produce power at multiples of todays panels. When solar is cheaper than coal without a license to kill as coal has,,, will Koch fellows support the cheaper solar power? Wind and solar will marry well, and it will happen regardless of the bad math propaganda that sprouts from Koch.